Communications services provided over an IP network is gaining wide acceptance by consumers. To ensure communication services are meeting the demands or negotiated service levels requested by the consumers, it is necessary to quickly resolve any defects or failures that may impact the communication services provided to the consumers by a service provider. In some instances, these consumers are large enterprise customers, such as large corporations, where a service disruption or even a service degradation may negatively impact the enterprise customers' business operations. Thus, a service provider will need to monitor and manage the underlying IP network to quickly detect occurrences of defects and/or failures so that proper remedial actions can be quickly taken to minimize any impacts to the services provided to the customers of the service provider.
Unfortunately, given the complexity of the core IP network, the various access networks and the equipment deployed at the customer premises, it is often very difficult to quickly isolate a defect or a set of defects to a particular root cause without a substantial amount of time that must be expended, e.g., by a technician who must consult with a plurality of sources before the problem can be isolated. For example, the problem can be located within the IP network itself, can be located within an access network that is external to the core IP network, or the problem can be located within equipment deployed at the customer premises. As such, a technician may need to consult with various systems before a root cause can be properly isolated and for corrective action to begin. To ensure customer satisfaction is maintained, the delay in isolating the root cause of a defect or failure should be minimized.